A card

During the plane ride back home, I wrote a card to my mother, having finally summoned the courage to say everything that I had wanted to say.

There I sat, in between a middle-aged man and a young mother, crying as I moved my pen.

I don't know what to make of that.

Going home

As people started finishing their finals and packing up to head home, it occurred to me that I wasn't as excited to leave as everyone else. Most of my friends were full of impatient anticipation -- I sure didn't get the impression that anyone felt the least bit sad about the semester ending. I'm finally leaving. I can't wait to go home.

It's difficult to say whether their attitude was simply a response to the stress of finals (I don't think anyone can seriously say they like the finals part of college), but regardless, I found it a bit disheartening just how eager everyone was to leave.

To already be thinking I'm finally leaving after just the first semester is a bit sad, sure. But that second line, I can't wait to go home is what stung me.

I suppose it's only natural that people would rather be home than here; home is where we've spent the majority of our lives, and it's where our friends and family are (if only during break). But the thing is, while my friends continued to rave more and more about how excited they were to go home, I gradually realized that I might actually feel more at home here than in California.

I guess that says a lot about me, doesn't it.

But I will digress for a moment.

Over Thanksgiving, my sister pointed out that my mother had raised us to be independent; that meant learning to take care of our own problems, and first turning to either our peers or ourselves when the need arose. I can understand why: for someone as perceptive as her, I imagine it quickly became annoying to have to deal with her friends coming to her with their problems all the time. It was better to train us to become our own crisis-solvers than to spoil us with her own advice.

But I wonder if this upbringing affected how I develop friendships. In particular, I've noticed that I am remarkably whimsical about my attachments to people; it may not be hard for me to get attached, but given a little physical and temporal separation, my sense of attachment evaporates.

It's almost as if I only keep friends while they are useful to me -- once the situation disappears in which I had purportedly needed them, I don't see a reason to continue feeling attached.

I first noticed this on the last summer that I did CTY (which I wrote about before). But in a very disturbing turn of events, it may actually be happening for my own home.

In a way, I'm not that attached to my home anymore.

Well, shit.

That's why I felt so disheartened when my friends kept telling me I'm finally leaving. I can't wait to go home. It wasn't because I felt sorry that they hadn't enjoyed their first semester, but because I was so disgusted with myself.

Is three months all it takes for me to start making some other place my home? 

If so, something tells me I have much reason to be concerned.

Praise

Praise from your family or your friends doesn't necessarily mean anything. They have a social obligation to lie to you.

Matisse

Not my writing - my sister's.



when i came home two weeks ago
i saw you for the first time in two months

but it felt like i hadn't seen you in decades

you still recognized me, struggling out of my mother's grasp
to jump into my lap
and lick my face
but i knew something was different.

you, who used to race around the house like a white lightning ball of fur
lazed the days next to the glass sliding door
as the sunlight kissed your paling wet nose and stroked your fur

(i could never look at you for too long under the sun
the brilliance of white would have made me
blind)

you, who used to tumble up and down the stairs chasing my mother's footsteps
would whine at the foot of the stairs
waiting for somebody to carry you up

you, who never tired of energy during our neighborhood walks
would sit in the middle of the sidewalk, refusing to budge
until i picked you up and carried you home

i write of love so often
mainly of the romantic unrequited sort
but i think is the first time
i've cried while writing a post

you always knew when i was crying
you'd find me, wherever i was
and lick the tears off my face
as if you could absorb my pain

is it wrong for me to be crying like this
when i realized today that
you won't be there to lick my tears
the day that i cry for you